Disk Cloning

Hello, Im intrested in purchasing Acronis True Image 8.0 for Windows but I have a question.

If I clone a hard disk into some DVD´s and the I want to restore that image into another hard disk, a new, different size/brand hard disk. Is that possible? Is there a "correct" way to do it using this software?

I hope your answers help me to decide weather to buy the software.
Thanks in advance,
Dan

 

Yes, it is possible. True Image has a hard disk clone function designed for just this purpose.

Beware that even if True Image can clone your disk, your operating (Windows?) might not work with the new disk, e.g. if you also add a new disk controller (SATA / RAID) to use with that disk.

 

Cloning and Imaging are two different things - both of which can be done using TI. You can clone your hard drive directly to a bigger hard drive. This would be the preferred method to upgrade a drive. Or you can image your hard drive to DVD's as you suggest, then restore the image from the DVD's to a different drive. This takes some extra steps but the result should be the same, provided you Image the entire source drive to be sure your image includes the boot partition.

One thing I'm not sure of, but I recall trying the Image-Restore method once to go to a bigger disk and the result was that restoring the image only restored to the same size partitions as the original drive. So if you restore an image to a larger drive, you end up with some unpartitioned space left on that drive after the restore. But like I said, this was a while ago, and maybe someone else can confirm whether or not restoring an image gives you the option to resize the image's partitions.

If you do a clone, you don't have to worry about that. The clone will not leave any unpartitioned space on the new hard drive if you so choose.

 

Hi jimmytop,

You are right and this extract from a previous thread titled <Re: resizing destination hard drive ... > details a workaround for recovering the unused space.

Regards